Chapter 4 #2
Now it’s my turn to study you, sir.
I take the advantage while his lids are lowered since there is no way a warrior like this will doze off, and land first on the lavender half-circles under his eyes. Thick black lashes deepen the hue, his complexion made paler by it.
It bothers me that while tasting my soul invigorated him, giving him the strength to trek through the woods for hours on end without so much as losing his breath, using the hound’s soul depleted him.
Meanwhile, I gaped at the undulating, onyx smoke in his palm like it was my mother’s roasted peafowl. My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and a reptilian hunger seized control of my body, propelling me forward with a singular, terrifying purpose.
Why do I want Void souls when they are clearly bad for us? Does Falcen have the same craving? Is feasting on souls about need or preference?
What is wrong with me?
My nails cut into my palms. It seems like years ago that I woke up in my simple working dress, creeping over floorboards to feed Noxie, only to find him lying on his side near the front door. Stiff. Eyes open.
I cried over his lifeless form. The tears wouldn’t stop.
Losing my mother was the most difficult trauma in my life, but somehow, Noxie was worse.
Mother was the one who found him as a kitten.
She saved him, tended to him, made him part of our family.
He lay with her when she became sick and stayed with her until she died.
Then didn’t leave my side after I buried her.
Yet it was Noxie that I resurrected and not Mother. It was Edon I killed and not Falcen.
Please don’t leave me, too.
That’s what I was thinking when I buried him. That’s what triggered this.
“Why?” I blurt the question at Falcen, my voice thin and reedy. “Why did you save me? I don’t deserve it.”
Falcen’s eyes remain closed, but the furrow between his brows deepens.
He speaks so quietly I almost miss it. “It’s my duty.”
Duty.
The vow lands like a stone in my gut. Of course. Falcen is an Elite, sworn to uphold Vehloria’s laws. Bringing me to the Resonance Academy is just another task for him. Whatever fleeting connection I thought we shared is nothing more than a figment of my imagination.
Fresh tears threaten to fall, hot and stinging. I dash them away with the back of my hand, angry with myself for the weakness. I have no right to feel betrayed. Falcen owes me nothing. If anything, I’m the one in his debt.
I force myself to my feet, my legs tingling with lack of blood flow from being crossed for so long. Exhaustion drags at my limbs, but I ignore it. I can’t bear to be still any longer, to let my mind keep circling the same frustrated thoughts.
“I’m going to study the wards,” I mutter.
I half expect him to stop me, to order me to stay ignorant and stay put. But he says nothing as I make my way to the mouth of the cave, my steps slow and halting.
The symbols Falcen drew with his blood, mixed with the hound’s soul, shimmer with a timid light. I hover over them with my fingers, marveling at the intricacy of the curves and lines. This close, the metallic scent of blood mingles with the petrichor of the forest, a strange and heady combination.
I close my eyes and reach for the well of power inside me, the place where the remnants of Edon’s soul now reside. It leaps to my call, eager. I gasp at the rush of it and the way it floods my veins with liquid fire.
I wrench my hand back from the symbols as if burned, the magick within me still surging and famished. I can feel it pressing against my skin, begging for release. The urge to let it out, to see what I’m truly capable of, almost overwhelms me.
Staring at my fingertips, I allow the cobalt threads of magick under my skin to flow into them, then press them against the painted symbols.
The wards flare at my touch, their light intensifying to an almost blinding white.
I feel them strengthen under my magick, the power of Edon’s soul reinforcing Falcen’s protections.
Smiling, I turn to Falcen.
It falls when he surges to his feet. “What are you doing?”
“I...” I look down at my hands, still twinkling with residual magick. “I wanted to help. To make the wards stronger.”
He stalks toward me. “You reinforced the wards? With the boy’s soul?”
I shrink back from his scrutiny, suddenly unsure. “I didn’t mean to overstep. I just thought...”
Falcen holds up a hand, silencing me. He moves closer, reaching out to grab my wrist. I flinch, but he ignores it, turning my hand over to study my palm, running his thumb over the fading luminescence. His touch is electric, sending shivers racing down my spine.
His hold turns into a vise.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
I try to pull away, but fail. “I was trying to help instead of being a burden.”
“Help?” Falcen barks a harsh laugh. “You’ve likely drawn every Void creature for miles straight to us.”
My stomach drops. “What? How?”
He shakes his head and releases my hand with a scoff of disgust.
“The wards were designed to mask our presence, to blend in with the natural energies of the forest. By infusing them with a pure, unfiltered soul, you’ve turned them into a beacon.”
“Do you think maybe you should have told me that?”
Falcen snarls, “The only mistake I made was untying your Nox-damned hands.”
As if he needed to further prove his point, a chorus of howls rises in the distance. His head snaps toward the sound.
“They’ve caught the scent,” he says grimly, storming back to where he’d deposited the dented pieces of his armor.
He unrolls a large piece of fabric he’d been using as a pillow, shaking it until it billows out from his hands like a thick black flag. Falcen then strolls up to me and unceremoniously tosses it over my head.
“That will cover the smell of your surge,” he snaps, then stalks to the cave entrance, his boots crunching on loose shale.
Sliding the fabric off my head, I realize what it is and settle it around my shoulders.
The same dark blur that had swept between me and the Void hound’s jaws is now heavy and warm from his body.
My fingers catch on the raised stitching at the back of his cloak as I adjust it.
A silver skull, trapped beneath a circle embroidered with cracks that look like shattered glass.
The Elites’ insignia. The enslaved warriors the academy sends to the Void rifts and don’t expect back.
Falcen pauses at the threshold, his head cocked to one side, listening. The howls rise again, closer this time, a discordant choir of starvation and evil.
“They’re coming. We have minutes, at most.”
My stomach pitches. That strange magick I channeled into the wards still thrums through my veins in a rush of energy that leaves me lightheaded. I sway on my feet.
Falcen glances down, registering that I’ve practically glued myself to his side. “Stay behind me. And by all that is bright, do not use whatever remains of that boy’s soul.”
I nod, thoroughly chastised.
Falcen sweeps a hand across the wards, smearing them into uselessness, then steps out of the cave. “If they breach the cave, run. I’ll find you.”
I nod again, my throat too tight to speak. Fear and guilt churn in my stomach, a nauseating jumble that threatens to bring me to my knees. But I force myself to straighten my shoulders and return Falcen’s stare with a boldness I don’t truly feel.
We stay that way, his eyes searching mine for a trait I probably don’t possess, like bravery. Then he lowers his chin in curt resignation and turns to face the oncoming threat.